I'm the environment editor at Forbes. Before joining Forbes in April 2011, I wrote about all things green and tech as a contributor to The New York Times, a senior editor at Fortune and an assistant managing editor at Business 2.0 magazine. I previously was the business editor at the San Jose Mercury News and during the (first) dot-com era served as a senior writer and senior editor at The Industry Standard (RIP).

The Next Wave In Renewable Energy From the Ocean

This article appeared in the February 27, 2012 issue of Forbes Magazine.

MOTORING ACROSS THE PUGET Sound, Reenst Lesemann spots a yellow, barnacle-encrusted contraption bobbing on the wind-whipped waters off Seattle. Called the SeaRay, it’s the prototype of a device that Lesemann’s startup, Columbia Power Technologies, is betting can help transform wave energy from a long-running science experiment into the next renewable energy bonanza. “I have never seen a multibillion-dollar market where the customers are literally waiting on the technology,” says Lesemann, a former venture capitalist.

Indeed. A new government-sponsored study has found that the oceans surrounding the U.S. contain enough energy to potentially supply more than half the nation’s electricity demand. Even with the limits of today’s technology, scientists concluded, there’s sufficient recoverable energy offshore – some 1,170 terawatt-hours a year in all – to keep a third of the country humming. More energy crashes annually onto the West Coast, for instance, than California uses in a year.

And now the reality check: 5 megawatts. That’s how much electricity—enough to light about 4,000 American homes – is being currently generated by wave energy worldwide despite years of work by a plethora of startups and many millions of dollars in government support, according to research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

What happened? Before the financial crash, the great green tech boom unleashed a rush of startups and speculators staking claims on federal waters to build massive wave farms, while in Europe governments, including Portugal and Scotland, placed big bets on wave energy. But making green off blue power soon proved to be so much California dreaming as plans for West Coast wave energy arrays sank under opposition from surfers, fishermen and local residents.

Even California regulators, who had green-lighted Pacific Gas & Electric’s contract to buy electricity from a solar power station that would orbit the Earth, balked at the utility’s deal with a wave energy startup, concluding the technology was too risky. And when companies finally began deploying their first wave energy generators in Europe, punishing ocean conditions took their toll as some devices broke down or failed to perform as expected. “They may work well in prototype in a very small size, but when you scale them they don’t necessarily work as well in a harsh seawater environment,” says Angus McCrone, who follows the wave industry for Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

But now the endless wait for that perfect wave generator may be drawing to a close. Thanks to advances in software, a new generation of startups like Columbia Power are cheaply and quickly testing hundreds of new designs in virtual oceans while veterans of the industry are perfecting their technology to wring more energy from waves and lower the cost of electricity. Multinational corporations like Lockheed MartinLockheed Martin and Alstom, the French energy giant, have struck partnerships with startups to commercialize their technology. “We see wave energy as a very serious market for renewable energy in the future,” says Tim Fuhr, director of ocean energy for Lockheed Martin. “Basically, we see the ocean as the largest untouched source of power on the planet.”

Last September Lockheed Martin paired with Ocean Power Technologies, a New Jersey company that has spent the better part of two decades developing a device to transform the motion of waves into electricity, accumulating a $120 million deficit along the way. The aerospace conglomerate will help OPT develop a supply chain to industrialize its PowerBuoy wave generator, which is undergoing sea trials in Scotland, for deployment off the Oregon coast this year as part of a 1.5-megawatt wave farm. (Lockheed has a similar partnership with Wavebob, an Irish wave energy company.)

“We have established the survivability of our technology out in the ocean, and we now have a product we can sell commercially,” says Charles Dunleavy, OPT’s chief executive. The PowerBuoy generates 150 kilowatts of electricity and resembles a giant vertical dumbbell anchored to the sea floor. The top portion of the 115-footlong device floats on the ocean’s surface, and as it bobs among the waves the motion pushes pistons to create mechanical energy to drive an electrical generator. The electricity is routed through cables to the power grid onshore.

According to Dunleavy, software simulations have been key to improving both the PowerBuoy’s design and its ability to tolerate harsh ocean conditions. A smaller version deployed for the U.S. Navy off the New Jersey coast survived 53-foot waves when Hurricane Irene hit last August. Software control systems also allow the device to adjust to wave conditions.

Columbia Power Technologies, based in Corvallis, Ore., aims to spend a fraction of the time and cash OPT has expended to deploy its full-size wave generator. “We want to innovate as inexpensively as possible by using more pixels and fewer molecules,” says Lesemann, 47. “Our competitors, for whatever reasons, have tended to innovate through large-scale prototypes, which is a very expensive way to go.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

You are of course correct that sea water is extremely corrosive, particularly to those metal surfaces which might as an anode. However oil derricks have been operating in the open ocean for decades in a manner somewhat similar to the proposed ocean wave device without undue costs due to corrosion. There are materials design exactly to resist this type of corrosion. For example there are materials that can act as a “dimensionally stable anode” (DSA). Normally in seawater a metallic anode would be “sacrificial”, that is to say it would loose material and it dimensions would unstable. This is exactly the same situation in industrial processes that produce chlorine and bromine, a brine solution is place between an anode and cathode and very high currents ar applied. This is an even more corrosive environment than sea water. DSAs are used in the manufacture of chlorine and bromine without corrosive loss. Similar materials are routinely used on off-shore oil platforms and can last for many years.

Don’t forget about Maine. There are several companies here working on tidal power. This is from the Bangor Daily News: (http://bangordailynews.com/2012/01/20/business/federal-reports-highlight-untapped-energy-potential-of-maine-tides-waves/?ref=latest): “’Maine’s wave and tidal current resources offer real opportunities to generate renewable energy using water power technologies in the future,’ Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement. … For tidal energy, Maine had the third-highest potential behind Alaska and Washington in terms of the total theoretical generation capacity and the number of tidal “hot spots.” … Later this spring, Ocean Renewable Power Co. (http://www.orpc.co/) plans to install underwater turbines similar to giant paddle wheels in the waters near Eastport and Lubec to capture the world’s largest tidal range — the vertical distance between high and low tides — flowing from the Bay of Fundy. That range is sometimes as much as 50 feet in the area.”

Our oceans are vast clean energy sources just waiting to be tapped. Nice to see Tidal gaining momentum, along with Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. Creating base-load power from the temperature difference in shallow and deep water. So many tropical regions pay enormous fuel costs, and turning to their own oceans as a source of energy could pave the way for a more sustainable future and economy for much of the developing world.